Nine-year-old Destiny Chase’s first round of blood work after sticking herself with a hypodermic needle discarded in the woods near her home on Brown Street has come back negative – no infectious diseases.
This is the first step in easing her mind and the minds of her parents, Don and Vickie Chase. She still has another five months of tests and is waiting until she is completely out of the woods, but this first step is a good sign. The likelihood that she has contracted an infectious disease lessens as time goes by.
According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports, the first concern is hepatitis B, which has the greatest chance of being passed through a needle. The second likely threat is hepatitis C, which has a much lower chance of being passed through a needle. The third is HIV, which has an even lower chance of being transmitted. The blood work for hepatitis B and C can reveal an infection within weeks after an exposure, but she’ll have to wait months for the HIV results.
Chase was exposed in March and had her first blood taken on March 31. Her father said the first tests all came back negative. He said he wasn’t sure exactly which tests they’d done so far because he hadn’t received a full explanation from his daughter’s doctor, but the doctor had reassured him the negative results were a very good sign. She’ll have to go back in a couple weeks for another round.
“I feel pretty good about it,” he said. “But we’ll still worry about it until the doctor says she’s clear and out of the woods.”
His daughter said she was less worried but still afraid about the blood tests – the needles, to be exact.
“I was scared, scared about the blood test part,” she said, saying it was painful as well as being scary. “I started crying.”
Her father said it was difficult to get her to take the tests at the end of March, and she wasn’t looking forward to the next round. “She’s petrified of needles now,” he said.
Chase said she cried when they went to the doctor, but she felt better after it was over. She said she’s been worried but trying not to think about needles and tests. She said she’s reminded of it when she looks up at the woods where she found the needle, a place she doesn’t dare go anymore.
Beyond that, she was teased at school a little bit but not to any great degree. Chase said at recess at Congin School some of the kids picked up wood chips and pretended to prick themselves. She said it made her feel “pretty depressed and sad.”
Her father said she came home, and they could tell right away she was upset. He said he’d thought it was a possibility there might be some repercussions from sharing their story, but he “didn’t think it would go like that.”
He said he was sure other 9-year-olds weren’t reading the newspaper, but their parents might have shared the story with them. Whether they listened to everything their parents said, he didn’t know.
“Kids hear what they want to hear,” he said. “They probably heard bits and pieces.”
In any event, Don and Vickie Chase told the school about the incident immediately, and there hasn’t been any teasing since then. He said a few days after the teasing, his daughter had invited some of the very same kids who’d teased her to go roller skating with her.
He said there’s been some good from sharing their story as well. People have come up to him in the grocery store and other places asked about his daughter. Also, a number of police officers have stopped and asked after her when they see them on Brown Street.
“It made me feel like people care,” he said.
Don Chase said he goes out to the woods two or three times a week to look around for needles. He said he hasn’t found any yet and hasn’t seen too many people hanging out back there, just passing through.
The section of woods is a city-owned parcel that was intended as a cut-through between Brown and Dodge streets but never developed as such, according to City Planner Brooks More. Now it’s used mostly as a pedestrian cut-through. Previously, it was used as a party area for young adults mostly, said Don Chase.
Police Chief Paul McCarthy said the city doesn’t have any plans to clean up the area or any of the other areas similar to it around the city, but police would be more than willing to help in a neighborhood-organized clean up. He said so far no one has approached him about it. He also said the city has received one other call about needles being found since Chase pricked herself.
Don Chase said parents should educate their kids about needles and other dangers. “There’s a lot of unseen dangers out there,” he said.
His daughter had a warning for kids as well. “Never go into the woods and never pick up something if you don’t know what it is,” she said.
Chase will undergo another round of tests in a couple weeks. After this next round, the main concern should be HIV, which she’ll have to wait for the six-month mark until she gets all-clear, according to Ellen Hathaway of the Maine Medical Center.
In a previous interview, however, Hathaway said the likelihood of an HIV infection is low because Maine is a low-risk state and because HIV doesn’t survive more than a few days in dry environments such as in a needle in the woods.
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